A Series of One Shots
by MarkerIV
Summary: Round 2: "Bella and Edward's break up hit her a bit harder than she ever could've expected. She wasn't worthy of him, clearly. And she would do anything to become worthy... anything"
1. Chapter 1

This piece of work is a tribute to Stephenie Meyer and all work is owned by her not myself. I write this for mere amusement and not monetary gain. The first tiny bit contains many quotes copied directly from New Moon and will change the story dramatically from there on out. I hope you all enjoy the show!

Be warned... Angst...

Bella POV

"You're not good for me, Bella."

His words echoed and repeated themselves in my brain, a scratched record playing over and over. I stood there staring at him, a hole punched through my soul as I emotionally bled out onto the forest surrounding me.

"Don't do anything reckless or stupid." He ordered, no longer detached. "Do you understand what I am saying?"

I could feel myself nodding helplessly, the world started spinning and I could hear my own heartbeat pumping, the blood started rushing through my ears. He was going to leave me. I had to stop this. He had to take me with him or I was going to die. I could feel my despair, an angry monster, out to devour me already. It would be a short hunt.

They say when a person is near death, they commonly experience flashbacks of their lives. All I could see was Edward and the time I had spent with him and his family the Cullens. The images came rapidly flashing at me and one phrase pierced the haze of memories.

"I promise that this will be the last time you'll see me. I won't come back. I won't put you through anything like this again."

My mouth dropped open and I felt shocked to my core. As the flashing continued to dazzle me a single phrase uttered long ago grabbed the attention of my stalled mind and forced me back to the present. "Personal kind of heroin..." I whispered. See thats the trouble with drugs. Keep it readily available in quick supply with someone entirely devoted to abstaining, and with enough willpower they will never fall. Eventually they will even run away to avoid the drug entirely. Edward was running away from me, determined to never look back.

"You can go on with your life without any more interference from me. It will be as if I never existed."

Would he go on as if I never existed? I had come to expect that he would let me die, but to not remember me... I don't know that I could handle that, knowing that to an immortal my life was not even a ripple in the pond. I could suddenly see with clarity and my mind seemed to focus on one self destructive thought. How to make him remember, how to insure he never forgot. My voice was eerily steady as I spoke.

"Do you remember the faces of the people you have killed and eaten?" I asked, his eyes widened at the unexpected prod. It would seem being a vampire did not protect someone from the shock of the unexpected. I could see however his eyes flashing and I became certain that for the moment Edward was seeing a flashing replay of faces in his head. "I think you do." I let the silence sit for a minute feeling the moment, all the more certain it was my last. "It is the only way for me to be with you isn't it." His face continued to wear his mask of ice and I could tell I was right. He would not stay with me, a human, nor would he turn me. The only way to be with him was to be in him. His dinner. Suddenly I knew what I had to do and turned.

Edward POV

"Don't do this," she whispered.

My heart was breaking, my soul was shattering. All the proof that we vampires were damned was being painfully laid before myself as I did something no one with a soul could possibly do to the one they loved.

"If... That's what you want."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. My mind was on the pain of my turning. My whole body aflame. I could recall the sensation perfectly and there was no better memory to keep me company as I invited myself to a whole new realm of torment.

"Do you remember the faces of the people you have killed and eaten?"

The change in the conversation startled me and I shut down for a moment. My mind did then start to flash, going over every face. I finished my mental walk and looked up to see her face eerily calm. Tracks of tears had made way down her face but the flow had stopped and her eyes were clear but unfocused, as if seeing beyond me.

"I think you do... It is the only way for me to be with you isn't it."

I felt horror, shock and a sense of powerlessness. I am known for being the fastest in my family, but it did not prepare me for what happened next. The present continued and appeared to me to be in slow motion and yet I felt as if I was moving through a gelatinous fog preventing me from moving and likening me to a snail. I watched powerless as she turned and threw her body onto a sharp exposed root of an upturned tree. The root snapped instead of penetrating her vulnerable body, the remainder however had no difficulty in scraping up her side and causing her to bleed before I gathered her into my arms. She had a gash running down the length of her arm and the skin along her stomach was cut up in several places and bleeding freely. My dear Bella was bleeding...

Bella POV

I had done it! A part of me wondered if my clumsiness would betray me or if Edward would somehow anticipate and prevent my attempt to bleed. I was bleeding! I was... Really dizzy. Edward had seemed to snap out of his shock and was now cradling me from behind, his touch held the light and sensitive aspect that I had come to learn was a lie. As he was trying to form words I took some of the blood with my good hand and smeared it more on my lips before lunging toward him and giving him one final bloody kiss. I knew he would resist breathing, I had to make him taste it, I had to make him taste me...

Edward POV

I hate what I am. For 70 years I have survived on the human equivalent of Tofu. Only upon meeting Bella have I truly desired to break that streak, even then I resisted. However being force fed my singer's blood was not something I was prepared to fight. As I looked into Bella's fluttering eyes I could see her life leaking into my mouth in an ever rushing stream that seemed impossible to stop. The taste was exquisite and yet the only thing I could think about was finding some way to stop. Bella's eyes had become unfocused. I forced my jaws open as Her skin paled and became comparable to my own and then she whispered to me sweet words of death and attempted to pull me back onto her neck.

"Don't stop my love, finish your tasty wine. Let this be my parting gift. Keep its flavor in your memory and..."

Her voice faded off as the blood loss started to become too much. She whispered to me a few sweet last words.

"O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die."

I finally managed to pull myself entirely off and attempted to turn her. There was little time, I started methodically biting and licking attempting to force enough venom into her to save her to undeath. Behind me I suddenly felt the thoughts of my family, come to see me in my weakest moment, come to see me in my shame.

Alice walked slowly up from behind me and knelt down to the now prone form of Bella. She smiled sadly down at her and gave her a brief kiss on her forehead. "We will always remember you Bella. We will never forget." She said softly, looking deep into Bella's barely open eyes.

We all heard Bella's heart make a final thump.

And then, she died.


	2. Disturbing

As I must remind myself frequently, I own nothing. Everything belongs to the great SM all bow to her skill and wit.

It had taken four months for me to be able to feel again. My bedroom chair overlooking the window that he used to come in had been my cocoon for those months, as the pain whittled away my sanity and I emerged on the other side... Transformed. To what I was not sure, another stage in my journey? Perhaps I really was a worm as a human. Had these last four months been a chrysalis of evolution for me, or just the death throes of the worm? I shook my head displacing the thoughts and attempting to focus on my present circumstances only to be caught up again in the beginning of it all.

At school I had become a zombie, silently moving from class to class. My grades had crashed after he left and I realized one day that I didn't care enough to put forth any effort into doing anything. I had gone from being a straight A student to one who just would not respond to the most passive request. Teachers talked to me expectantly trying to re-involve me in classes, but after a few weeks of silence they stopped calling my name out for attendance and just looked for my corpse in its seat. My previous "friends" were the same. I couldn't blame them and in all honesty I was grateful that other than Angela's occasionally hello I had managed to completely segregate myself from the entire school. I kept changing into this freak like creature who had one foot in the normal world and one in the mythical. The dance was not one I could keep up and I could feel my sanity slipping.

As time moved on, my nightmares had been getting worse instead of better. Instead of just... him... walking away from me, I saw the after. Lost and confused, alone I wandered, a dark forest or an empty city. I watched as not only had he left me, but everyone did. I would look on as Alice, Jasper, Emmett and Rosalie, Carlisle and Esme, Renee and Phil, Charlie and even Jacob would shake their heads at me and walk at a painfully slow pace towards the darkness at the edge of the tree line or around a building and out of sight. The pinprick of despair would hit me right as they were claimed by the shadows that I would never truly see them again. The agony of feeling all of them make that choice one after another burned through my soul ravaging whatever else had been left of it. I began mistaking sleep for wakefulness and often reality for the dream. After one large string of sleepless nights I began seeing HIM just out of the corner of my eye, he was always so quick however, I could never turn my head fast enough to fully catch him. I began talking to him quietly during my day, arguing, begging and pleading for him to come back to me. It started with me wanting me back and more recently I have been asking for him to return if for no other purpose than to finish me off.

I was always too innocent he said, too kind, too pure for him. I still couldn't force myself to think out his name as I argued back and forth with my ever present hallucination. He was always hung up on that stupid virginal purity and all of that. I could never be his equal on any level and he could never want me at anything more than a guilt laden meal. The desire to be worthy of him churned in my stomach making the hole in my chest throb and burn. I started copying some of his odder mannerisms to remember... to bring him back. To show him that I was not some crystal carving to be kept atop a glass pedestal but rather was a... I forget. My memory seems to slip lazily along the arrow of time.

I suddenly recalled an off hand comment from Angela which startled me at first, she commented that I had stopped moving as frequently and that with how pale my skin was getting these days from intentionally avoiding sunlight. I would have truly fit in with the Cullen's now. The mention of the name made the ravaging pain unbearable. I sat there silently and as she continued to talk animatedly while I sat as motionless as possible. My breathing slowed and I could feel the steady shudder of my heart pounding within my chest. I, a human, had unknowingly become vampire like. Perhaps I did belong with that family of murderers.

I did not make any serious connections with that idea until later that evening. While sitting in my chair staring out the window I sarcastically considered and argued the differences between a human and a vampire with my ever present demon? Is the difference really so much? Sure there are the benefits, agelessness, immortality and freedom, but the downsides did exist between both races, the draw to murder, boredom and not being able to sleep. I've been talking to myself out loud and jump slightly when a subtle cough interrupts my cursed ramblings. Great, now Charlie knows I am crazy.

A fancy leather seat, a rather dear old woman talks in the background but I just don't hear her. It has become apparent that I was correct in my assessment of myself that day in La Bella Italia. I do operate on some different frequency from the rest of humanity and something is indeed wrong with me. I was given pills to take and watched nightly for my consumption of them. The pills often made me sleepy which brought back the dreams.

I began with avoiding the nightmares by avoiding sleep, chugging concentrated caffeine drinks and mixing my daily prescriptions with large doses of energy pills. Thank you Evergreen 76! I could not have become what I am today without you and three AM caff runs. I let loose a laugh that had the barest taint of my inner madness. I spent a month on the edge of sleep and wake. I became aloof, alert and uncaring while secretly plotting. They say at three days a person is certifiably insane. I rather felt the opposite. The longer I stayed awake the more things finally became clear.

That he felt compelled to drain me dry and add me to his list of the dead was his chief complaint in our lengthy arguments. That he had killed so many before ever meeting me in his time away from the family. Perhaps there was a way to make me worthy of him. A monster for a monster. Choosing to be a vampire, embracing the negatives before being rewarded with the benefits.

I could finally feel past the pain and could recognize the anger and pity buried deep inside the crypt that was my soul. Anger that I had been left here, refuse left to rot. Pity for Charlie, who had been through this damn shit before and was helpless to do anything but watch me crumble. I contemplated the similarities between Charlie and myself and wondered if Charlie had wanted to die when Renee left as much as I did currently? It is weird to think of how similar we have both turned out to be. Only I Have left my cocoon and Charlie is still in his over a decade later. I felt the deep desire to lash out at Renee for being just as big of an ass as... him. I realized then that when I left I could not do the same thing to Charlie, when I left, I had to take him with me. When I left, I could not leave Charlie in pain, he, like me, had to die.

My first vampiric act. It had taken a few weeks to prepare, but now it was time to beat against the walls of my chrysalis. It was time. It was surprisingly amusing how easily I carried out my plan. A little bit of benadryl (read - the whole bottle) mixed into a few ingredients of dinner mixed with Charlie's daily beer intake had him snoozing in his recliner within 30 minutes. I then went to the garage to find his fishing gear. I just couldn't do in my father as he slept with a regular old kitchen knife. This was my father's death! I had to be creative and create a lasting memory to take with me to my grave. It was only proper and I would give my father the best send off I could.

The knife I decided on was fairly small, only about four inches long and its thin leather wrapped handle had a curve that was just the right size for my hand. It was a relatively simple thing for me to wield. As I stood over my father I smiled knowing that soon he would not be in any more pain. "I love you daddy," I whispered. The soft prayer reached his sleep chained mind and I could just barely make out a mumbled "You too Bells." Taking the knife in one hand and my father's hair in the other I messily stabbed the point into his jugular before running the sharp blade across his throat severing it to the bone before embracing my new twisted nature to bend down and let some of his blood into my mouth. I could almost feel an hallucinogenic easing of the burn in my throat. When I finished and could drink no more I looked down at the blood all around me. Before HE had left he said that I was too pure and innocent to ever be a vampire. As I skipped out of the house and helped myself to the keys for the Cruiser and a sharpening stone I couldn't help making a snarky comment to my ever constant hallucination.  
"Not so innocent now Edward."

The voice pleaded with me to get help, but it was not help that I needed. I needed to become worthy of him all on my own. As I drove the cruiser to Seattle the blare of The Vortex and The Afterparty mirrored the beat of my heart. As the tunes pulsed I could not help but to smile. I was on my way.

Flashes of memory. A ditch for the cruiser. A seedy south Seattle bar and an abandoned warehouse with a large drain over a series of chains. The storeroom full of chemicals where I made my own first toxic blend. Faces, Charlie, a homeless old man with no hope, a drunken hobo, a young woman leaving a bar, a teenage boy thinking he was about to get laid for the first time, a six year old girl lost without her mommy, a baby left unattended for a moment in a grocery store, others... I would knock them out and drag them to my little hole before stringing them up by their feet and winching them into place. Draining them of their blood was fun, time consuming and filling to my belly.

I gorged on murder, dined on hate and gleefully listened to their screams with no one but me to hear them. They would start out strong, yelling for help and for someone to cut them down. I would cut them then while they were aware, usually somewhere in the neck and from behind. Just enough to drain them slowly. The old men cried for god, the women for a hero, some sort of savior, the children for their mommy or daddy. They died all the same.

I would steal a new car every night before dumping a body in the trunk and driving it to some remote location before stealing a new car and moving elsewhere for new prey. I would gather my prey with a new method every night. Within a month I had a kill count of twenty bodies. "See, I will catch up. I will be a better Vampire. I will earn my place at your side." My mantra repeated endlessly in my head and as the bodies piled up I started getting more extravagant. After I was finished I would light the vehicle on fire, set it to drive off of a cliff or into a river. The possibilities were endless.

At least they had been, I thought to myself as I glanced back up at my watchers before turning back to continue my meal. It was a girl this time, roughly fifteen with dirty blonde hair. I had caught her skipping class at a local jr. high and offered her some drugs in order to get her to follow me to my newly stolen vehicle. A quick bash on the head followed by stuffing her face into a cloth soaked with my new friend chloroform and she was quickly in my trunk and on my way to my hideout.

I had just finished binding her when she awoke and began screaming and begging. I kicked her in the gut once to shut her up before connecting her feet to the pulley and winching her up above my drain. My twenty first meal since I began this method of coping. I cuffed the girl with the back of my fist in response to her restarted whining. She kept asking the same inane questions they always ask, "What do you want?", "Why are you doing this?" I swear my food needs to get some serious creativity one of these days. I was just about to stab her and 'dig in' when I caught sight of them. Four figures on a catwalk overlooking my feeding area stood shrouded in darkness.

"Feel free to watch." I answered as if they had asked permission before turning back to my prey. A simple stab of my blade and the moans of terror quieted and my feeding began. I paused a few times and looked over my shoulder to see the four cloaked shapes unmoving in the stillness pierced by the sounds of my victim's agony. All too soon I felt full and ended my game by opening her veins more fully and watching the blood flow out of her and down the drain on the floor.

"Time to greet the guests I suppose." I announced into the darkness. "It certainly wouldn't do to be impolite." I wiped the remaining blood from my lips with my jacket's sleeve. The plaid jacket had been Charlie's constant companion on many a fishing trip and he had kindly left it for me in his cruiser. It was a wonderful parting gift. "I apologizes for my lack of preparation to receive you. Had I known I would have guests then I would have set a few extra places at my dinner table." They kept their silence and were unnaturally still as I walked toward them. Finally I stood below them, looking up I could see a matching pattern on their ash grey cloaks that moved subtly around their shrouded figures. "Forgive me, I have failed to properly introduce myself. I am Bella, and you are?"

We stood there in the silence for perhaps two minutes before the smallest of the group jumped down smoothly to land behind me. I half turned to keep them visible. As the vampire in front of me lowered their hood her bright red eyes stood out before I acknowledged her unearthly beauty. They wore fine clothing of an older style that I did not recognize.

"My name is Jane," she paused and I could just barely catch her eyes quickly flash back up to the balcony before I felt the rest of her friends join her around me. "and you are a foolish mortal." I could feel their eyes on me as they began to circle, one vampire at each of the polar coordinates.

"You have taken us quite a while to track down. Imagine our surprise when we finally figured out our little hellion in Seattle was not a fellow creature of the night on a newborn's rampage, but rather a wonderful smelling snack all dressed up for Halloween. I am actually quite impressed that you have managed to draw the attention of the Volturi? Shall we see if you are lucky enough to survive it?"

I managed to break eye contact and took in the rest of her. Her midnight dress clung to her skin and she had a small smile that anticipated my pain and death, I couldn't bring myself to do more than to welcome it with open arms. Something she had said however rang a bell within me and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"What of it?" I finally answered with a cruel smirk as memory hit and washed over me. A conversation, a painting, in Carlisle's study, Edward referencing pissing off the Volturi to end his existence. "Am I not outside of your jurisdiction? The Volturi police the Vampire population while I am still merely a human." Now to really piss them off. What I remember of vampire law all ties to secrecy, and what could be more secret than this memory? "Are Aro, Marcus and Caius bored enough to send you all the way across the world for little ole me?"

"She is quite clearly mad," remarked the tall one and burly. "However she plainly knows too much. Caius will be interested to know who the guilty parties might be."

"So make her talk," replied another, this one was lightly built. "She is quite amusing and even this close I cannot taste the flavor of her mind. Jane, what of you?"

"Who did you learn our secrets from?" Jane's flat tone brooked no argument as she closed the distance between us. Eye to eye I gazed into the blood red depths of her angry orbs and found myself entranced as the cold marble of her right palm cupped my cheek. I felt it then, the moment approaching. All I had striven for was soon coming within reach. Not here, not now, but soon I would be judged. I let it out then, a subtle smirk which quickly grew into a manic grin. This one was frustrated with me. Was that two tests I had passed so far? I wondered at the third.

"She is unaffected." Jane cool facade and unblinking stare broke with a frown. Her whisper was quiet and almost tender as her other hand joined the first. "What is it you hunger for little sheep? What are you hiding? Who are you protecting?" She reached then for my hand and I stood perfectly still and compliant, even offering my hand when she slowly reached for it, however unwilling to answer. I am proud that my unnerving smile did not falter as she crushed not one but two bones in my hand. I let out not a peep.

"So," I offered casually as I tucked my now damaged hand into my coat pocket and made direct eye contact with the largest of them. "When do we leave for Volterra? I have quite the story to tell." I was not very surprised when he gazed back at Jane questioningly. I had thought that she was the leader amongst them and his behavior had confirmed it. He slight nod that was just barely within my ability to sense cemented my future.

"My name is Dimitry. We leave tonight."


End file.
